Diablo 4 Lunar Awakening event brings a new limited time event to Sanctuary

From February 6 to February 20, Diablo 4 players get to experience the new Lunar Awakening event, spanning both Seasonal and Eternal Realms and lasting for two weeks.

So how do we participate in the Lunar Awakening event? What does it reward, and are those rewards worth our time as players? Let’s chat about the Lunar Awakening.

Use Lunar Shrines to begin participating in Lunar Awakening

As far as how to participate, so far it seems pretty simple. Head to Ked Bardu in the deserts south of Scosglen and look for the Lunar Night Market, headed up by Ying-Yue. It’s the place where you can get rewards for playing around with the Lunar Awakening content and make use of the Ancestor’s Favor reputation you’ll be grinding up through the two weeks it’s live. If you remember how the Midwinter Blight event played out, it’s very similar, just in a different location.

In order to gain Ancestor’s Favor, you must find and activate special shrines throughout Sanctuary, identifiable by the dragon bust atop the pylons.

While out and about in Sanctuary doing your usual demon destroying duties, be on the lookout for new shrines called Lunar Shrines. Clicking on these bad boys will give you a 50% XP boost (and it’s multiplicative, so clicking on another shrine should boost the effect) and also bestows one of a multitude of buffs on your character, direct from the ancestors themselves. And if you’re trying to farm as much Ancestor’s Favor as possible, you can use Nightmare Dungeons with the event-specific Ancestor’s Favor dungeon affix. That helps in farming because it guarantees that only Lunar Shrines will spawn inside the dungeon, so more of the mob kills will generate Ancestor’s Favor reputation for you.

Grind Ancestor’s Favor for cool rewards

But what do the Shrines do, exactly, besides an XP buff? Well, they’re basically the same as the shrines we already know in Diablo 4, but also have a special Lunar effect on them. The first thing that happens when clicking on any of these shrines is that they spawn Miserly spirits, so you get to immediately kill some of those for Ancestor’s Favor. Then, we know about the following special Lunar bonuses to each Shrine type.

• Artillery Shrine – Casts have a chance to summon a holy bomb.
• Blast Wave Shrine – Each explosion summons a cluster bombardment.
• Channeling Shrine- Increased attack speed and chance to reset cooldowns.
• Conduit Shrine – Summon frequent, powerful, shocking strikes.
• Greed Shrine – Chance to summon a Treasure Goblin. While the Shrine is active, 25 kills summons a Treasure Goblin, and 50 kills summons a second.
• Lethal Shrine – Chance to instantly execute a struck monster, causing Fear on surrounding monsters. Note: this includes Elites, but excludes Bosses and other Players.
• Protection Shrine – You reflect all incoming damage. Damage reflected scales with Level and World Tier.

That makes Ancestor’s Favor Nightmare Dungeons the ideal way to farm Ancestor’s Favor, but it’s not the only way — just clicking on Lunar Shrines during the event will grant you the benefits of the Shrine, including the 50% XP buff and the Ancestor’s Favor reputation.

As you grind rep (there are 10 levels of Ancestor’s Favor to gather) you’ll be able to return to Ying-Yue at the Lunar Night Market and spend that rep on neat cosmetics like armor appearances and weapons and so on, although Blizzard hasn’t shared details about those just yet. But if that’s got your interest, head into Diablo 4 between February 6 and February 20 and get those Ancestors to approve of you for gear rewards, XP, and loot.